Something's Cooking
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl AU. Oneshot. Carol's been teaching a cooking class for years, but this one is a first. Caryl. Carol/Daryl


**AN: Here we go. This one is in response to the Tumblr prompt that wanted Caryl as student and teacher.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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This was a first. They said there was a first time for everything. Carol had heard it more than once in her life. This was definitely a first.

Carol had started teaching cooking classes two years before. She'd always meant to be a chef. It had been something of a dream for her to be one of those head chefs at a big restaurant. When she'd stood in her small kitchen, before she married Ed, making meals for herself and her college roommates, she'd always imagined that she was preparing special dishes to serve at her four star restaurant in some romantic location.

It never really mattered that her reality was that she was standing, barefoot, in boxer shorts and tank top while she scrambled eggs for a very hungover Andrea and Michonne. In her mind? She was preparing dishes that someone would take pictures of. She was making food that would end up in magazines. Her name would be known worldwide.

Like most dreams, though, that one fell short of the mark.

Her cooking skills had served her well, more than once, in her marriage. Ed could—though not always—sometimes be talked out of one bad mood or another with the preparation of a dish that he found particularly enjoyable. Her cooking had become, for her, a way of taming the bear at least a little. Sometimes, if he'd eaten well enough, he'd go off to hibernate afterwards and leave her in peace for a while, just as surely as if she'd put sleeping pills into his food.

She'd never done that, of course, except the one time—and it had been the last meal that she'd ever prepared him. Once he was passed out, completely unaware of everything around him, Carol had packed her things and her daughter's things and she'd escaped. She'd never looked back, really. The first time she'd seen him in court was actually the first proof she had that she hadn't accidentally overdosed him because she hadn't been sure how many of the crushed up pills were really necessary for executing her plan.

These days? She made her money with her cooking, but it wasn't the glamorous life that she'd once dreamed it would be.

She worked, most days, at a small diner in town and cooked for them. In the evenings she taught cooking courses with a low price tag for anyone who wanted to learn some of the basics of cooking and keep from—as Michonne always declared that she could do well before Carol worked with her—burn water with enough effort.

And on the weekends? When she took time off to relax? She used her cooking for her own benefit and fed her daughter and her friends well to celebrate the life that she led now.

It wasn't glamorous, not like she'd thought it would be, but it wasn't a total loss either.

She liked the cooking classes, honestly. She got to meet a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life. People that she might not have ever expected to take a cooking class were interested in it when the price was right and the hour was late enough—thanks to the fact that Sophia loved spending time with her "aunts" who made the evenings fun for her—that it didn't interfere with their regular work schedules.

But it was a first for Carol when the man walked into the classroom, where only three other people were present, carrying a sack.

He proceeded to take her softly offered advice to choose a work station and he deposited his sack there, going through it and beginning to unpack it. One by one, he put several articles of food on the work station. Carol watched him, out of the corner of her eye, while she went through the brief introduction that she did every time she started with a new group of students. She couldn't even tell, honestly, if he was paying attention to her discussion of safety practices and such in the classroom.

Finally, when her introduction was done, Carol went around the room and asked everyone else to introduce themselves. They did so and she greeted each of them personally. When she got to the man with the sack, he introduced himself as "Daryl Dixon" and gave no more information.

Daryl Dixon, it seemed, was not a man for long introductions. He also, she learned, was not a man who was worried about soiling his clothes—clothes which would have had a difficult time becoming more dirtied than they already were from whatever job he'd been doing prior to the class—because he was not going to wear an apron.

It didn't matter. Carol got everyone started on their first lesson. Something simple, yet satisfying. It was a meal that, although not a great challenge, would give them a sense of accomplishment for their first night and would cover some of the "difficult" issues for those who had problems with the simple things. It was spaghetti with meat sauce. And everything, as Carol had mentioned in the pamphlets she sent out when they signed up for the class, was included in the tuition and was provided for them to get started.

But even once everyone else was already working? Daryl Dixon was simply standing there, shuffling from one foot to the other every now and again.

So Carol walked over to him and leaned against his station, trying to make herself approachable enough for open communication.

"Was there something you didn't understand about the instructions?" Carol asked.

Daryl stared at her.

"Not stupid," he said. "Any idiot can make spaghetti."

Carol bit her lip.

"I'm sorry," she said. "We'll be getting to more challenging things later. But—we do sort of start with some basics."

He hummed.

"I can wait," he said.

Carol bit her lip again. She didn't want to laugh at him, but at the moment she was finding it difficult not to. The really hard part of it all was that he wasn't joking. His tone of voice and the look on his face said that he meant what he said. He was perfectly satisfied to stand there and "wait" to prepare something more challenging than a dish that any "idiot" could make—even though Carol was sure at least one person in the class would have to be talked down from the disaster that was likely to result from their first attempts to even make that dish.

Carol perused his work station. With him, Daryl Dixon had brought a lot of food. He'd brought enough food that she was pretty sure that he was prepared to cook everything they'd make in the span of the course right now. She couldn't quite take inventory of it all, either, because it appeared that he'd taken the liberty to do a little "preparation" before he'd even come.

Carol cleared her throat.

"You know," she said, "the food was included in the cost of tuition."

Daryl hummed.

"List you gave wasn't that great," Daryl said.

Carol decided that, before her time with Daryl Dixon was done, she was going to bite a hole all the way through her lip. It wasn't something she was going to be able to avoid.

She raised her eyebrows at him.

"I'm sorry," she said. "If the class isn't challenging enough for you..."

She didn't finish. She was pretty sure that he could figure out what it was that she was going to say because he glanced toward the door. Then he looked at everything that he'd piled onto his work station and shrugged at her as if to say, without actually putting any of his effort into forming words, that he'd already done all this work—he might as well stay.

So stay he did.

Carol left him alone. It was his money. He was paying for the class. Whether or not he got anything out of it? That was, ultimately, his choice.

She focused her attention on the other students. She left him to do what he would.

And what he would do was ignore entirely what they were doing. He stood by his work station, waiting for something that interested him, and didn't participate in any of the "simple" dishes that Carol walked the rest of the class through. He didn't offer anything for tasting and he didn't partake of any of the food that anyone else prepared. He didn't cheer with any of them for their victories through the next three dishes, and he didn't offer any emotional support when there were a few small failures.

In fact, the only thing he did do was set about making himself an omelet—not on their list for the night—from the food around him and he proceeded to eat it while he waited.

When the class finally finished, and everything was washed up and put away, Carol drew the whole thing to a close, wished all of them goodnight, and told them the wonderful things that she promised to help them prepare in the coming week—once they'd practiced with these dishes at home and mastered them.

And, one by one, the other few students filtered out of the room while she bid them a goodnight and patted them on the shoulder as they passed through the door.

When she turned back, though, to reenter the classroom, she found Daryl Dixon still standing there beside his work station. All of his food was still laid out in front of him, across his workstation, minus that which he'd used to make himself the omelet. Everything was untouched.

And from the looks of it? Daryl was still waiting.

Carol crossed the room with determination now, stopped in front of Daryl's station, and put her hands on her hips. He regarded her with a little interest, but not with much concern.

"What are you doing?" Carol asked.

Daryl shifted a toothpick around his mouth—one of the ones put out for samples and such on every station—and shrugged at her.

"Hell—I'm waitin' to learn to cook, ain't that what I paid you for?" He asked.

Carol raised her eyebrows at him.

"You know," she said, "one responsibility of a student in their learning is that they come prepared to learn."

Daryl stared at her and, for the first time, snorted with some amusement. He swept his hand in the air around his station.

"Pretty damn prepared," he said. He cleared his throat. "One responsibility of a teacher is that they come prepared to teach what the hell they students don't already know."

Carol hummed at him.

"Touché," she said. "If you already know how to make everything, why did you sign up for the course, Daryl? It's a beginner's course."

"Don't know how to make everything," Daryl said. "But—I been cooking since I could drag a damn chair to the stove. I reckon I covered—spaghetti and prepping food and shit a long damn time ago. I can boil shit. Chop it. Fry it. Bake it."

Carol shook her head.

"Then—Daryl? I'm sorry to say this, but I don't think this is a class for you," Carol admitted. "I'll refund your money, but that's what we do in this class. It's an introduction to cooking class. I don't know what you expected."

Daryl stared at her and then he narrowed his eyes.

"Wrong," he said.

Carol hummed, asking him to clarify himself without having to put it in so many words.

"This is the only damn cooking class," Daryl said. "And—you some kinda cooking teacher, ain't you?"

Carol straightened up.

She hadn't been challenged by a student yet. She heard other people talk about it, some of the professors who talking about "teaching real classes," but it didn't happen to her. After all, she wasn't teaching a real class. Nobody took her cooking class seriously. They didn't have to. She simply taught people how to prepare the basics. She made sure, in her own way, that some of these families didn't starve or weren't forced to eat every meal out of a can or a box.

But nobody challenged her to teach anything that wasn't basic because they were still learning how to scramble eggs.

"I teach cooking classes," Carol said.

"And you can cook?" Daryl asked, sounding almost as though he wasn't sure of the answer.

Carol huffed at him.

"Of course I can cook!" She responded. "I'm a cook. I'm a—chef," she said, hesitating to add the last word.

"So—teach my ass to cook," Daryl said.

"You already said you can!" Carol shot back.

He looked amused.

"Not what the hell I come here to cook," he said. "I know you. Know you work at Florence's place down there. Know you a damn good cook. And I know—you can teach more'n the shit you taught tonight. So—that's what the hell I wanna learn to cook. And I done paid you my money."

Carol sighed and looked at the station again. It was clear that he'd put a good deal of effort into the preparation for his meal. He'd thought it out in advance.

Carol swallowed and brought her eyes up to him again. He was looking at her now and there was something in his eye. It was almost unnerving because she couldn't quite put a finger on what it was. Maybe it was simply him being smug, but she couldn't be sure.

She licked her lips and shrugged.

"Fine," she said. "I'll teach you. Whatever—whatever it is that you want to learn? I'll teach you. I've got—a little time. Just let me check in with my daughter. Make sure she's fine spending the night with her aunt?"

Daryl nodded.

Carol went back up to the front of the room, found her purse, and dug out her phone. She sent a text to Sophia who immediately shot a response back. She was fine, of course, with Andrea. She was always fine with Andrea. So Carol wished her goodnight, gave her love through text, and then shot a message of thanks to her friend.

She returned to Daryl's station.

"I'm all yours," she said.

He smiled a satisfied smile.

"So?" Carol asked. "What do you want to learn how to cook?"

Daryl's smile remained, the corners of his mouth retaining the expression even as he spoke.

"Nice dinner," he said. "Chicken, vegetables—some fancy sauce? The works. Nice dinner."

Carol nodded.

"Well, that's easy enough," she said.

"For two," Daryl added. "And—you ain't doin' nothing—so...I wouldn't mind if you was—uh—looking to eat with me? Just—try it out?"

Carol felt her cheeks burn hot, but she tried to will herself not to react at the moment. The way he was smiling at her, though, she almost felt embarrassed. She'd been had. He had planned this. And, honestly, it was oddly flattering.

Carol smiled at him.

"If you do well?" Carol said. "Really—apply yourself? I will. I'll eat your dinner with you. But—you've got to really apply yourself."

Daryl chuckled to himself and shook his head. His own cheeks taking on a slight tinge of pink that hadn't been there before.

"Alright," he said. "Hey—I apply myself in every damn thing I do—as long as it matters to me."

Carol didn't respond, beyond a low hum in her throat, but she couldn't help but admit that—as off color as the comment could be taken to be—she was more than a little intrigued by her new student.


End file.
